Posts Tagged 'AMS'

SoftLayer data centers are designed in a "pod" concept: Every facility in every location is laid out similarly, and you'll find the same network and server hardware connected to the same network. The idea behind it is that this design makes it easier for us to build out new locations quickly, we can have identical operational processes and procedures in each facility, and customers can expect the exact same hosting experience regardless of data center location. When you've got several data centers in one state, that uniformity is easy to execute. When you open facilities on opposite sides of the country, it seems a little more difficult. Open a facility in another country (and introduce the challenge of getting all of that uniformity across an ocean), and you're looking at a pretty daunting task.

Last month, I hopped on a plane from Houston to London to attend Cloud Expo Europe. Because I was more or less "in the neighborhood" of our newest data center in Amsterdam, I was able to take a short flight to The Netherlands to do some investigatory journalism ... err ... "to visit the AMS01 team."

Is AMS01 worthy of the SoftLayer name? ... How does it differ from our US facilities? ... Why is everything written in Dutch at the Amsterdam airport?

The answers to my hard-hitting questions were pretty clear: SoftLayer's Amsterdam facility is absolutely deserving of the SoftLayer name ... The only noticeable differences between AMS01 and DAL05 are the cities they're located in ... Everything's written in Dutch because the airport happens to be in The Netherlands, and people speak Dutch in The Netherlands (that last question didn't get incorporated into the video, but I thought you might be curious).

Nearly every aspect of the data center mirrors what you see in WDC, SEA, HOU, SJC and DAL. The only differences I really noticed were what the PDUs looked like, what kind of power adapter was used on the crash carts, and what language was used on the AMS facility's floor map. One of the most interesting observations: All of the servers and power strips on the racks used US power plugs ... This characteristic was particularly impressive to me because every gadget I brought with me seemed to need its own power converter to recharge.

When you see us talking about the facilities being "the same," that's not a loosely used general term ... We could pull a server from its rack in DAL05, buckle it into an airplane seat for a 10-hour flight, bring it to AMS01 (via any of the unique modes of Amsterdam transportation you saw at the beginning of the video), and slide it into a rack in Amsterdam where we could simply plug it in. It'd be back online and accessible over the public and private networks as though nothing changed ... Though with Flex Images making it so easy to replicate cloud and dedicated instances in any facility, you'll just have to take our word for it when it comes to the whole "send a server over to another data center on a plane" thing.

While I was visiting AMS01, Jonathan Wisler took a few minutes out of his day to give a full tour of the data center's server room, and we've got video and pictures to share with more shots of our beautiful servers in their European home. If there's anything in particular you want to see from AMS01, let us know, and we'll do our best to share it!

P.S. Shout out to the SLayers in the Amsterdam office who offered their linguistic expertise to add a little flair to the start of the video ... From the four employees who happened to be in the office when I was asking for help, we had six fluent-language contributions: English, Italian, French, Dutch, Polish and German!

**UPDATE** After posting this video, I learned that the "US" server power plugs I referred to are actually a worldwide computer standard called C13 (male) and C14 (female).

Growing up, one of my heroes was Mohammad Ali. While I admired his athletic ability, with my scrappy build I was never going to be a boxer. What I liked the most about Ali was that he said whatever he wanted and backed up his words with action. That is what distinguished Ali from the others.

I'm sure you've been to job fairs and read companies' websites where they talk about how their company encourages teamwork, employee empowerment and innovation ... It's usually right next to a picture of someone skydiving or kite boarding, right? Well I've been with SoftLayer for about a month now, and as you saw from my 3 Bars 3 Questions interview, I spent my first two weeks on the job in Dallas.

I can tell you without hesitation (and with no need for a kite boarding picture) that when you walk around the office in Dallas, you can feel a buzz in the hallways ... An energy that only comes from from people who are passionate and work well together. When I made the trek back to Amsterdam, I knew the environment and culture our team in Europe would need to foster to earn our three bars.

Last week, we had our first Truck Day in the new Amsterdam data center, and it was a perfect opportunity to show off the SoftLayer spirit and work ethic to our newest AMS01 SLayers with the help of the Go Live Crew:

As soon as two large truckloads of servers were delivered, the team jumped into action. We unpacked, sorted, scanned and racked the servers in record time, and it was actually a lot fun. When I walked into the data center the next day, it felt like Christmas: new toys, flashing lights and Barbara Striesand.

It's safe to say that SoftLayer is the Mohammed Ali of hosting. We make bold statements and can back up them up!

If you're interested in joining the SoftLayer team in Amsterdam, we're hiring for several different positions right now, and we'd love to have you join us. When talking to prospective employees in interviews, I always tell the SoftLayer story with Ali-like pride, and moving forward, Truck Day is going to be a perfect example to share. Where else are you going to find a company culture where everyone in the company (even the CEO) celebrates the company's continued growth by helping to unpack and sort hardware?

Based on the conversations I've had since Truck Day, I can tell if they are right for the team simply by their reaction to that story. If you're ready to roll up your sleeves to help out your teammates and have fun doing it, call me.

Within days of signing on to join the SoftLayer team in Amsterdam, I was on a plane to Dallas. With our facility coming online November 7, the onboarding process had to be accelerated, and the trip to our global headquarters provided an excellent crash course in SoftLayer's strategy and vision for the future. The trip also provided Kevin an opportunity to record a "3 Bars 3 Questions" interview with me after he talked to Michael Ong, the SoftLayer's APAC general manager.

Because I hadn't been a SLayer for too long, he took it easy on me, and we had a great discussion about SoftLayer's strategy in Europe and what customers can expect from our continued global expansion:

In the next week, you'll get a few behind-the-scenes glimpses of our final Amsterdam data center preparations leading up to our November 7 "Go Live" date. If you haven't already seen the "Amsterdam Ready to Launch" blog or the instant-classic "SoftLayer is Coming to Town" video about our international expansion, take a few minutes to check those out.

If you're based in Europe, have a significant customer base in Europe or you've just always wanted a server in Amsterdam, you can pre-order your first AMS01 dedicated server or cloud server right now, and you'll be one of the first in your neighborhood to enjoy our newest facility!

Over the course of about a month, you were able to follow the build-out progress of SoftLayer's Singapore data center facility. Todd book-ended his coverage of the process with an early look on September 2 and the official "LIVE" announcement on October 3, and given the fantastic response from customers to those updates, we're going to keep them going from Amsterdam.

If you follow SoftLayer on Twitter or keep an eye on our Flickr account, the last time you saw the Amsterdam facility, it looked pretty empty. You might assume that with all the attention on Singapore, Amsterdam wasn't getting much attention, but you'd be wrong ... Folks have been working non-stop in Europe as well, and the facility looks beautiful:

It's pretty obvious with the racks you see pictured that our go-live team has been on the ground and working hard in the new facility. We shipped loads of gear across a different ocean to get it to Amsterdam, but things will probably look pretty familiar.

When Singapore went live on Monday, customers were ecstatic. We've already provisioned a few hundred servers in the new facility, and the chorus of users anxious about our European expansion has gotten louder as a result. As you can see, Amsterdam is coming along nicely, so you'll have a SoftLayer server in Amsterdam before you know it.

SoftLayer's growth internationally has been fueled by customer demand, so while we're working on Amsterdam, we'd love to hear where you'd like to see us next. Leave a comment with the country/region you think could best benefit from a local SoftLayer facility ... And if you agree with any of the ideas, be sure to post your agreement as well so we get an even clearer picture of customer demand.